This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework is due on Wednesday 25 May.
To be able to use semi-colons in a list.
For many of Year 5, this is a new skill that we’re trying to become more confident with. The children have been given a sentence with a three part list in it. They should expand each part of the list adding description which may need extra commas (particularly if they’re using two adjectives). When re-writing their list with this extra detail, they’ll then need to use semi-colons to separate the parts in the list instead of commas and commas would just make the list confusing.
When I went out for tea, I had starters, mains and desserts.
When I went out for tea, I had delicious, puffy dough balls smothered in garlic butter; sumptuous steak which had been fabulously cooked and had crispy chips on the side; and a mouth-watering, rich chocolate pudding that oozed gooey caramel as you stuck your fork in it – yum!
I want the children to have a go at changing their lists so that they need semi-colons. Think about adding adjectives and using relative pronouns (which, that, when, who), ‘ing words and ‘ed words to add detail after the noun as well as before.